Lavenham Teacher

“You described Reform and other parties across Europe today as among the 'right wing equivalents of the fascists in the 1930s'. Why?”

“Because that’s what they are”

@vicderbyshire.bsky.social asks Lord Heseltine about remarks he made at Conservative Party Conference.

#Newsnight

IMO this is the way. Name it. Fight it.

And we have even less protection here. Trump can't fire judges who have constitutional protection. A government here could pass a law allowing them to do so with a majority of one in the Commons.

What Americans die from and the causes of death the US media reports on Causes of death in the US in 2023 Heart disease (29%) Cancer (26%) Accidents (9.5%) Stroke (6.9%) Lower respiratory diseases (6.2%) Alzheimer's disease (4.8%) Diabetes (4.0%) Kidney failure (2.4%) Liver disease (2.2%) Homicide (<1%) Terrorism (<0.001%)| COVID-19 (2.1%) Influenza/Pneu monia (19%6) Media coverage of these causes of death in 2023 in... The New York Times The Washington Post Fox News Heart disease (2.8%) Heart disease (2.9%) Cancer (4.1%) Cancer (4.7%) Accidents (5.9%) Cancer (3.8%) Accidents (6.1%) Accidents (9.7%) Suicide (4.1%) Suicide (3.3%) COVID-19 (6.0%) COVID-19 (7.9%) Suicide (3.8%) COVID-19 (5.3%) Drug overdose (7.5%) Drug overdose (9.8%) Drug overdose (9.5%) Cancer (26%) Accidents (9.5%) Stroke (6.9%) Lower respiratory diseases (6.2%) Alzheimer's disease (4.8%) Diabetes (4.0%) Kidney failure (24%) Suicide (2.1%0) COVID-19 (2.1%0 Homicide (42%) Homicide (52%) Homicide (46%) Terrorism (18%) Terrorism (12%) Terrorism (11%) Homicide (<1%) Terrorism (<0.001%) Note: Based on the share of causes of death in the US and the share of mentions for each of the causes in the New York Times, the Washington Post and Fox News. All values are normalized to 100%, so the shares are relative to all deaths caused by the 12 most common causes + drug overdoses, homicides and terrorism. These causes account for more than 75% of deaths in the US. A "media mention" is a published article in one of the outlets which mentions the cause (e,g. "influenza) or related keywords (e.g. "fu") least twice. Data sources: Media mentions from Media Cloud (2025): deaths data from the US CDC (2025) and Global Terrorism Index.| CC BY

Nice chart from @ourworldindata.org showing the contrast between what Americans die of (heart disease and cancer) v what the US media reports on (homicide and terrorism). This naturally leads to it being trickier to build a fact based world view
ourworldindata.org/does-the-new...

It breaks my mind that two British political parties have seen scenes like this and decided to try and replicate it in Britain. Thuggary, lawlessness, state brutality. Farage and Badenoch decided they liked the look of it.

The Opposition and the party that’s leading in the polls literally have policies more extreme than the BNP 20 years ago

This isn’t a picture of Mel Stride and the shadow chancellor being misidentified on ConHome feels quite indicative of where the Tories are at.

There's a fascinating case study to be done on the different strategies of Macron and Sánchez. Both emerged, against the odds, from centrist milieux in the mid-2010s to lead their countries since 2017/18. But their fates are totally different.

The main reason Farage is in a position to win a majority with 30% of the vote is the implosion of the Conservative Party. The easiest route to preventing that outcome is the recovery of the Conservative Party. Everyone on the left, and all the groups the left cares about, have a stake in that.

It's fascinating how there are still replies on this, and indeed on every post about the decline of the Tories, with people on the left and centre-left people going 'good'. Honestly, I don't know how big of a warning sign you need that the death of the Tory party is bad for your politics!

Removing her will be an act of mercy at this point. It's getting unbearable to watch her flail around.

Christian fundamentalist morality police. If these guys were Muslims this would be a national panic.

bsky.app/profile/mike...

I visited the apartment building ICE raided on Tuesday today. Story to come, but you can walk right in. Half of the apartments have no doors on them. Children's stuff abandoned in some flats. *Citizen* residents told me they were arrested and held for hours in zipties. This is America

Many pundits today are pushing the line that everyone who protests the genocide in Gaza is basically either antisemitic or tolerant of antisemitism. But isn't that precisely the conflation of the actions of the Israeli gov't with all Jewish people, which is at the heart of this wave of antisemitism?

Just not sure, really not sure, that I'd follow Kemi Badenoch as an example of the USA as a country that is protecting human rights without being in the ECHR.

R.I.P. Patricia Routledge.

Ofc as all true fans know her greatest performances were as Kitty in Victoria Wood's show:

"I shall be watching this, as my TV has now been fixed. Well I say fixed, a pimply youth in plimsolls waggled my aerial and wolfed my gypsy creams, but that's the comprehensive system for you."

I love this. The purest essence of Kemi - incredibly wrong, bizarrely belligerent about it, and also wrong in a way where you just go “have you considered reading anything other than your Twitter feed?”

🙏 💚

Unprecedentedly illegal & unconstitutional crimes happening in front of us daily. Folks look at you like you’re crazy when you say we’re in the midst of the worst, most unprecedented Article I constitutional crisis in American history, &, well, here we are:

I generally rate Chris Mason but it would make things easier for all if Robbie Gibb - Brexiter & Theresa May’s director of comms at Number 10 - were not still a non-executive director of the BBC. Everything he touches turns to shit. Including, at the moment, a lot of the Beeb’s political journalism.

Only piece of evidence the piece offers for its contention is that at present, only 34% of people think Farage is a racist.

Any chance that could that be because every major figure in British public life desperately avoids calling him that and instead waxes poetic about his 'legitimate concerns?'

Both my grandfathers fought in the war and my grandmothers served too. Their parents would all have been deported under Reform's policies.

“Yesterday morning, U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth behaved reprehensibly. Their speeches…were tantamount to incitement—a genuinely dangerous effort to suborn the military’s oath and condition them for using violence against their fellow Americans.”

Repeat after me: Labour's. 'Base'. Is. Not. Working. Class.

This comes the same day Hegseth told the military to pursue "the enemy within" and not to worry about war crimes. They want to embed the ethos of ICE into the military.

The funny thing is that if you look back to the 1980s, Labour moved to the political centre because its working class base was shrinking and wasn't a sustainable electoral coalition. Labour strategists are pining for the 1980s when the 1980s strategists decided the party had to widen its appeal!

the president of the united states wants to use the american military to kill american citizens on american soil. that's the whole story!

Live updates: Trump defends using troops to police U.S. cities in address to military leaders The gathering, at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, was ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and required some officers to fly thousands of miles.

He didn’t say “police.” He said “war.”